Paris : Shopping and Eating

Galerie Vivienne

I always like to leave a free day at the end of a holiday to do a little shopping and also so that there is time to squeeze in that one last activity.  Then we can go back home with no regrets... But before we get to that, let’s first do the round up for food and shopping in Paris.

I have, even before my Konmari stint, stopped buying souvenirs on holiday and started buying specialty food.  But even so, it is possibly to have lots of fun shopping for food or even just cruising the shops.  So here are my highly personal shopping “to-Dos” in Paris:

1.  Walk through their covered passages.  I wanted to be a “flaneur” and walk around the elegant
covered galleries of Paris.  I forgot (silly me) that the French shopkeepers don’t work on Sundays and the galleries were closed. I did manage to find one (Galerie Vivienne)  which was open to people who just wanted to walk through, and it was full of charming old-fashioned shops which made me wish I could go in and explore further.  So try going there on a weekday, to get away from chain stores and discover something unique to bring home from Paris.

The queue outside Louis Vuitton, Galeries Lafayette

2. Look at the Louis Vuitton Queue at Galeries Lafayette, which spills out into the corridor...  .... I just went to the Galeries branch of Angelina, where I enjoyed a glass of their famous chocolate (I got it cold, which is probably a crime but it was a warm afternoon).  I had a hot chocolate at Café de Flores on another day, which is another must-do.

3. Visit Shakespeare & Co.  I just said that I don't buy souvenirs but there is always the exception that proves the rule.  For me, it is that one book from Shakespeare & Co (see earlier post), so I can get it stamped with the bookshop logo.  

4. Gawk at Le Bon Marche - Le Grand Epicerie.  
I loved the huge food hall where there are so many exotic foodstuffs on offer, from all over the world.  I bought some biscuits and other edibles to take back to the office. There are also a few counters where you can sample the fresh seafood (cooked on the spot for you), or get a quick sandwich (we did this) and also an extensive boulangerie section.  .

5. Have it all at G. Detou - ah, the owner’s boast is true they do indeed have everything (j’ai de

J'ai de tout

tout) an aspiring baker could ask for, all packed within the two little shop units which make up this old-fashioned shop. As Clothilde from C&Z says, it’s magic!  Like her, I got pearl sugar, about 1 kg worth...  that's going to be a lot of choquettes.  But that's one item you can't get anywhere in Singapore.

There are many other kitchen equipment shops in the vicinity of Les Halles, as documented here.  In particular E. Dehillerin, which like G. Detou, is an old fashioned little shop with wooden shelves going up to the ceiling, all filled with amazing copper pots and pans.

6. Buy a baguette! The French buy a baguette every day.  You had better do it too.  There is a great boulangerie just below my sister's apartment, so that is where we got our daily bread.

7. Buy cheese at the airport!  ‘Cos then you can be assured that it is packed for air travel and won’t stink up your luggage.  I got a slab of Comte, and a little round of Camembert.

We had a nice time eating in little bistros and restaurants around Paris, including Breton buckwheat crepes at a creperie in the St Michel area, steak frites (steak with fries, another classic meal) and a simple salade Nicoise at a small cafe on the same road as G. Detou.

But I thought I would mention a few in particular, in case you are looking for a (moderately priced) place to go to after you've finished a morning's sight-seeing:

Whimsical decor at La Fourmi Ailee

1.  After a visit to Notre Dame, when visiting the Latin Quarter, try La Fourmi Ailee, at 8, rue du Fouarre, Saint Michel. It is a charming little place, where the walls are covered with paintings including one of a tortoise and a series of Chinese characters.

I had a yummy fresh pasta dish with tomatoes and black olives.  Warm, hearty fare at reasonable prices.  There were only a few diners when we got there but the place filled up swiftly thereafter.

Mona Lisa as painted
by the computer

2.  Near the Louvre, you can find the Cafe de la Regence, 167 rue St Honore.  It is an elegant brasserie, with bookshelves and paintings lining the walls.  It was a little strange however to see a pixelated Mona Lisa on the wall just beside our table.

When in France, embrace French food.  So I ordered a duck confit (duck cooked in its own fat) and a bowl of French onion soup topped with a crust of bread and cheese - it's as traditional and French as you can get.  The duck drumstick was tender and tasty, and it was accompanied by the most marvellous tiny new potatoes!    The onion soup is such a French classic but it is so filling that it could be a whole meal in itself.  I was glad that we shared it.

Beef bourguignon

3. After visiting the Sacre Couer, or when wandering around Montmartre: Try L’Anvers du Decor, 32bis Rue D’Orsel.  This is definitely not in the super-crowded area just next to Sacre Coeur, so the serving staff had time to go through the menu with us.  

It is supposed to be famous for its beef dishes so I had the beef bourguignon with French beans on the side - lovely and tender meat, hearty, rich stock.  And of course this is another French classic meal.  My sister had a pot of mussels though.

Les Nympheas

Moving outside Paris, we had a lovely outdoor lunch in Les Nympheas in Giverny, just outside Monet's house.  The name translates to "water lilies" in English and is obviously a reference to Monet's iconic work.  The little restaurant is surrounded by a veritable sea of flowers and so we were happy to sit outdoors for once, where we were able to enjoy the sunshine and the beautiful blooms around us.  Go early, to beat the crowds and visit the garden after lunch.

I had a quiche for lunch but my mother and brother-in-law tackled the rabbit dish.  It looked rather yummy but the quiche was really very good so I have no regrets.

Quiche at 3 Rue Pichet

In Chartres, we had lunch at 3 Rue Pichet.  This is another small unpretentious, charming restaurant where the waitress brings the menu for the day on a little chalkboard.   I ordered a salmon and potato dish - well cooked and tasty but it was a little light, even for me.

My mother took the quiche and my sister the duck served in a broth with carrots, potatoes and bacon (!) with a crust of bread on the side.

So we had lots of tasty meals but I have to give praise where it is due, so  lots of kudos go to our favourite Chef, my dear Brother-in-law who would whip up something yummy most evenings so we could have home-cooked, value-for-money food rather than go out to eat.  He did a great steak frites, prepared a salad of buffalo mozzarella and after a day of sightseeing we got back to a dinner of asparagus, his famous roast potatoes, savoury sausages and a baked vegetable dish (I can't remember what vegetable exactly). And that was really eating like the French :-)

Dinner en famille

More photos will be put on Flickr, when I get round to it.

Last but not least... we did go for that one last activity in Paris ... a totally touristy activity, a boat cruise down the River Seine!  And so I end off this series of posts on Paris with a photo of the Eiffel Tower:

Au Revoir Paris!

French Cooking with Julia Child

I took my first French cooking class more than a year ago. That started me off baking, after I realised how easy it was to make a delectable chocolate lava cake. Actually there were some issues there with the outcomes because my actual oven temperature was well below the stated levels and I had to deal with underbaked cakes, but the process was easy enough. So I tried out a few recipes from Chocolate and Zucchini and went on baking from there. But where French cooking was concerned, that's as far as it went.

So fast forward a year and a bit. I'm flying back after a holiday, the in-flight entertainment hangs for the umpteenth time. I borrow my cousin's copy of "My Life in France" (MLiF), Julia Child's (JC's) story of her introduction to France, French food and the art of French cooking. I read Chapter One, end of flight, return book. Interest definitely piqued. A few weeks later, my cousin SMSes: do I want to watch "Julie & Julia", a movie based on MLiF and "Julie & Julia", a book by Julie Powell, a blogger who cooked her way through all the recipes in Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" within a year. We go to movie, I walk out and buy "Julie & Julia","Julia's Kitchen Wisdom" (a slim little book which JC describes as a "mini aide memoire for general home cookery") and borrow MLiF from my cousin. That's what Meryl Streep's exuberant, effervescent portrayal of JC can do to a person. I highly recommend both MLiF and the movie.

Going through the recipes, I started with a basic omelette. JC highlights the technique (the ingredients are same old, same old - eggs plus butter, salt and pepper) which her French chef teacher taught her - the "shake-and-jerk" method. You beat the eggs, season them with salt & pepper, put butter into the frying pan and when it's hot, add the eggs. Allow the eggs a few seconds to solidify and then pull the handle vigorously towards you. Somehow Newton's Laws of Motion apply and the egg curls up upon itself in the frying pan till it is a beautiful, neat oval. Then you sort of unmould it into a plate. My unmoulding technique needs work but nonetheless I was very happy with my efforts. Next, scrambled eggs. Beautiful.

But making an omelette or scrambled eggs are not something to write home about. I set my sights on making beef bourguignon, a dish which is not easy to spell or pronounce. It was featured twice in the movie and frankly it made me salivate just watching. My brother's birthday provided the occasion. My mother provided the beef. It only took me five hours to turn out a thoroughly delectable pot full of tender beef in an absolutely scrumptious broth, chock full of carrots, onions, mushrooms.

It was a slow, painstaking process which started with my making lardons (streaky bacon boiled for about 6 minutes to remove salt and smoky flavour), then drying the beef with paper towels before frying, to facilitate browning (what Julia doesn't tell you: use good quality paper towels which don't stick to the meat), and then popping beef, lardons, browned onions and carrots, one bottle of red wine plus assorted herbs and beef stock in a pot and cooking till the beef was tender. Whilst the beef was cooking I sauted some mushrooms, and brown-braised sliced white onion. The recipe calls for pearl onions but I couldn't find them in Fairprice so settled for a large white onion. The onions were fried in butter and oil till brown, then added chicken stock, a teaspoon of sugar and salt. They turned out silky smooth and sweet and yummy beyond words. The mushrooms and onions are added to the beef when cooked. But I still wonder how the pearl onions would have turned out.

Reactions: I seem to have gotten good reviews all round. There were leftovers, but I put that down to the rather excessive quantities of beef my mother thought necessary for the occasion. And this gives me an opportunity to eat more of the dish.

For anyone who wants the recipe, the link is here. I should note that there are differences in the recipe and the version in Julia's Kitchen Wisdom. Kitchen Wisdom omits the dredging with flour before the beef stock and wine added. The tomato paste is also replaced with a can of diced tomatoes.


Julia: I'm hooked!

A Michelin Meal

Some people come to France just to collect Michelin stars, i.e. eat at Michelin-starred restaurants. I had only one such meal - at Christian Etienne in Avignon, a one-star Michelin restaurant. Probably that makes the meal all the more memorable for me.

By now, of course, we had eaten a number of good dinners in nice restaurants. But dining in a Michelin-starred restaurant is different. It is not just about the food - it is definitely about the service, too. The receptionist took my coat at the door, and we were given little stands to put our handbags on (we took some time to figure out why they had put these little iron things next to our chairs) and so on. And yes, they do take the time to explain the menu in English, and when dishes are brought to you they 'introduce' them to you. There were quite a number of service staff too - the maitre'd, his frenzied waiters and waitresses, all rushing around. The chef himself makes the rounds of the tables, greeting his guests. He definitely is not in the kitchen preparing your meal. But guess that is what being an executive chef is all about.

We started off with our aperitifs, bite-sized, tasty morsels. I had ordered tuna ceviche as a starter (essentially sashimi), lamb and asparagus as my main course and an orange and carrot macaron for dessert. I enjoyed the tuna sashimi - quite a substantial portion - but was less keen on the dried avocado which accompanied the dish as the rich, creamy texture of the avocado was completely lost. The lamb, on the other hand, was perfectly cooked, as were the asparagus accompanying the dish.


We had a little pineapple sorbet next, to cleanse the palate before dessert. I had a really interesting orange and carrot macaron with some almond sorbet. The carrot was raw, grated carrot sticking out of the middle of the macaron. Interesting, but somehow it worked. Our meal ended with coffee and a row of petit fours - we could not finish ours. It was definitely a very memorable meal. If you want to see all the food photos (not just the dishes) click here.


I've basically come to the conclusion that French food in general can be divided into a few categories:

a) traditional basic: your baguettes and pastries and the like, which are typically very good and tasty, likewise the patiesseries
b) fine dining: obviously very fine indeed (anything from 70Euros per person and up)
c) tourist food: generally not very good though quite cheap.
d) mid-price, good value meals: hard for tourists to find. (20-30Euros per person)

My sense is that unlike Italy, which does pretty good deals with their mid-range menus even in tourist joints (at least the tourist joints I haunted), the French tourist menu is just not that great. I recall having this lovely salad with beautiful fresh ingredients in Florence. But here in France, somehow if you go to a cafe by the Seine, for example, you know the quiche will be a little eggy and wet, the crepes will be covered with nutella and the salad will consist of a few soggy leaves and maybe a slice of tomato or two. But buy a baguette with some ham, or chicken, and you eat a good meal for about 4 Euros or so.

Sadly, I only discovered the website "Chocolate and Zucchini" nearer the end of my stay in Paris. The blogger, Clotilde Dusoulier, is a young Frenchwoman who went to the US to work and started cooking there. She came back to France, continued to cook and started a blog about her cooking, eating etc. She wrote in English, so as to keep on using the language and it became a big hit. One book deal followed, and then another. Clotilde is now a full time writer. Her latest book is "Clotilde's Edible Adventures in Paris" and it gives little tips on her favourite eateries in Paris. I managed to spot this on the shelves of "Shakespeare & Company", our last full day in Paris.

So for those intending to go to France in the near future, check out her site. And also, print out her French-English food glossary. I found that my little phrase book was most put to use in restaurants. Whilst I soon memorised "agneau" for lamb and "canard" for duck, there're a lot of of little phrases which I just can't remember.

Bon Appetit!

From Paris to Avignon

Today, we left Paris for Avignon. We had spent much of the previous night packing up. So, we spent the morning taking our last look at Paris.

First, coffee in a small specialist coffee shop and then we walked to the Pompidou area and then to Les Halles. It was all very ordinary and then I had two firsts! First, I saw my first McDonald’s in France. It was near Les Halles and aside from a small unobtrusive sign above the entrance, the Golden Arches were not in sight. Guess McDonald’s has finally learnt about French subtlety. Then, I walked a little further and spotted my first cat! However, it swiftly dashed away from me into a fenced area where I could not follow. We wandered around till it was time to go to the train station.

We were taking the TGV from Gare de Lyon to Avignon Central. It was a fairly smooth journey and I was able to update my journal, look at my photos and do the accounts along the way. We picked up a taxi at Avignon Central and he took us to our B&B, La Banesterie. The taxi driver drove rather rapidly around the walls of Avignon till he reached the entrance gate nearest our B&B (near the Palais des Papes, or Palace of the Popes). Then he made his way through a maze of little streets before stopping in front of an ancient building with a statue of Mary above the door. I was delighted.

We were holding up traffic (this was a narrow, cobblestoned street which allows only one car through at a time) so we quickly disembarked and entered the house. The first thing which I noticed was the smell of chocolate, lingering in the air. Our host was a tall Frenchman with a curly mop of hair. He took us to our room and then sat down with us and a map of Avignon to mark his recommended restaurants on our map.

Wandering around the B&B only confirmed our impressions. It is a really charming old place with low timbered ceilings, uneven floors, small narrow staircases (of course our room is on the third floor, thank goodness the ceilings are low), lovely old furniture etc etc. There are also signature chains of “glowing roses” in each room. Our room also had a little plate of chocolates and a lavendar pouch on the bed. Details, details.

We took a walk out to see the sights that evening and wandered around Avignon. The Palais des Papes, the Place de l’Horloge, the Rue de la Republique where the high street shops were and the small little boutiques in the pedestrianised area and along Rue Joseph Vernet. We found many closed (many shops close on Mondays and typically close on weekdays at 7pm) so there was a certain amount of window shopping. Finally, however, it was 8pm when restaurants started to open (here they keep Paris time!) and we went to La Compagnie des Comptoirs for dinner. It was a new trendy restaurant in an old convent with the swankiest toilet I saw in France. (I did not realize until I checked out the weblink that it was originally opened by a pair of celebrated Michelin-starred chefs who were identical twins - Jacques and Laurent Pourcel). It was serving fusion-ish food. I had sashimi with a sort of cream cheese layer on it for starters. Then, a huge serving of this pork dish which was like kong bak with lots of honey involved – yummy, but I had a problem here because I don’t really want to eat all the fat but of course that is the nice part of the dish, so ended up removing the fat on two out of the three huge pieces of kong bak and eating only the last one in its entirety. That piece was truly delectable. The dessert was a spiced poached pear with chocolate and ice cream. It was nice but the table next to us was celebrating a birthday and the birthday cake featured not a candle but a sparkler! I just hoped that the rest of our stay in Avignon would sparkle too. The weather report is not good.

Photos here.

Of Cathedrals and Saints

Today, we took the train down to Rouen. We went down to Gare St-Lazare and found out that the train we were planning to take, was only scheduled for one day a year ! and as such had to take a later train, due to leave one hour later. That's what comes of not reading footnotes. Might be slightly difficult if they are in French, but at least there would have been some sort of warning. Anyway, we walked out for a short stroll about the place and did some window shopping before returning to catch our train.


We eventually arrived in Rouen just before 12 noon and found our way into the old city. Apparently Rouen suffered considerable damage during World War II but even so, there were many old, half-timbered houses which survived from the time. And certainly, the narrow, cobblestonee streets appear to be in good order. We walked down to Hotel de Ville and the neighbouring Eglise St-Ouen. Unfortunately the church was closed and we could not get in. But behind the church, we found a quiet park. It was lunch hour (maybe the reason why the church was closed) and many people were lying on the grass, enjoying the sun. This gentleman was definitely having a nap.


Rouen, we found, was a more leisurely place than Paris. People greeted each other with the traditional pecks on the cheeks, which we did not see in Paris. Drivers stop for people at the zebra crossings on the road. And lunch hour was definitely sacred. The church, various shops, and the tourist office were all closed. So we did as the people of Rouen did and lunched on baguettes in a square beside the cathedral.


Rouen is also full of Japanese tourists. The only spot open in the tourist office was the service point for Japanese tour groups. We also saw them in the streets, taking photos of the cathedral, and even at the next table to ours, sipping a cup of coffee. They were in the cathedral, too. I suppose it is because Rouen is such a convenient day out from Paris, and makes a nice accompaniment to a visit to Giverny. A "Monet day"!



Of course, the cathedral is the main attraction of any trip to Rouen. Its tall towers, intricate facade and delicate stonework are indeed very beautiful. But its main attraction had to be that it was painted so many times by Monet. Going inside, what I found interesting was the many little placards in the side chapels which described the chapel's contents and showed pictures of how the cathedral had been damaged in WWII. One placard in one particular chapel noted that this was the only chapel which had survived the bombs on that side of the cathedral and if it had been destroyed, likely the whole nave would have fallen in, and the whole cathedral destroyed. Here it is, with its wood-panelled walls and paintings still intact...


We were also lucky that the cathedral had been recently restored. In places like France and Italy, restoration is indeed a never-ending task, because of the number of such beautiful old buildings. No sooner is restoration completed on all the buildings, that it is time to start again. But it is well worth the effort as beautiful stone emerges from beneath centuries of grime.


We walked from the cathedral to this little street of shops, Rue de Gros Horloge to the Gros Horloge, or this big clock and the tall tower beside it. This was the shopping street in Rouen and as lunch time was past, it had come back to life. We made a little detour to the Palais du Justice, the old Normam Parliament Building and then found our way to the little church of St Joan of Arc, or Eglise Ste-Jeanne d'Arc.


St Joan of Arc is a French national heroine. Her feast day is celebrated throughout France, and the church is just part of a larger national monument to her. It is a small modern church, built besides the ruins of an older building (destroyed during WWII?). The church is roughly fan-shaped in area and has a whole wall of large, stained glass panels across the diameter of the hall. A flower bed outside marks the spot where Joan was burnt at the stake. On the other side of the church, is the marketplace. It seems a little incongruous but on the other hand, who knows? It could have stood there for many years before being rebuilt in a more modern manner...


We got back from Rouen that evening, in time for dinner at the restaurant in Nicholas Flamel's old house. It was a pretty restaurant, a charming place to have a meal. And service was pretty good. The food however, missed that special something. The appetisers were fine. I really enjoyed my foie gras with the baked gala apples on it. But my 7-hour lamb was a teensy bit dry. I also swapped dessert with my friend and her ginger creme brulee was not really very exciting.

After dinner, we went back to the apartment - to finish washing our clothes. Because we had no drier, the apartment was covered with clothes after that.

Photos here!

Cook'n with Class

Today we went for our French cooking class (including market visit, 3 course meal) at the cooking school "Cook'n with Class". Our chef teacher, Eric Fradeau, speaks excellent English – indeed, he was in New York for 7 years working for a hotel chain which got him to set up restaurants in their hotels. But he decided he wanted to try something on his own and Voila! Back in Paris, in his cooking school.


We were a class of 7 altogether: the two of us, a mother and 2 daughters from Canada, and this couple who happened to stay in the same neighbourhood as Eric did when in New York. We discussed menus on the way to the shops – decided upon mussels at the beginning, saw what was available in the shops for the starter, and so on (the French typically eat what's in season). For dessert, we decided upon the chocolate lava cake. Yum!


Market visit was not to a market per se but rather to a little series of shops on the street near the metro stop (Rue du Poteau). Our first stop was a horse shop. Now Eric prounounces horse “ors” so one of the Canadian ladies thought he was saying “ox”. But the horse heads on the sign gives it away. Eric says that the French are losing the taste for horse meat. There are now fewer horse meat shops in Paris than there used to be, and it is eaten largely by the old. Of course, the French do not eat the whole horse. Just three parts – the rump, tenderloin (and I forget the third). For hygiene reasons horse meat must be sold on its own and not with the other meats, hence these stand alone shops.


We next visited the cheese shop or fromagerie. I rather liked the shop, with the huge variety of cheese available to look at – from France and other regions in Europe (Italy, Switzerland and Holland). We got some cheeses here. Then, the butcher shop (boucherie) – again, incredible variety - with rabbit, chicken, duck, lamb, pork etc. Some with the "AOC" tag to show that it is meat of the highest standards. There was a “no dogs” sign in the shop but dogs were still pottering in and out. Need a proper leashing area for the dogs outside, since it would be impossible to think that the French would leave their dogs at home.


Next to the fishmongers (le poissonnerie), where we were going to get our mussels plus two large sea bream. The fishmonger de-scaled, de-boned and filleted the fish on the spot for us. Finally, the vegetable shop where we were shown around all the varieties of beautiful tomatoes, potatoes and so on – and where we also picked up bunches of white asparagus for our appetizer, in addition to loads of veggie and salad items - macha leaves or “lamb lettuce”, oranges, a tomato, potatoes, celeriac (celery root tuber – now I know what that looks like) plus lots of herbs - flat leaf parsley, tarragon, and a bouquet garni of thyme and bay leaves, and some strawberries and raspberries to accompany our dessert. And just before our arrival at our cooking school, we picked up some bread from an artisan boulanger, i.e. the baker bakes from scratch including milling his own cereal. No short cuts on food for the French.


What was really charming was that these little stand alone shops have not been completely replaced by supermarkets. The variety and high quality of goods available in each shop indeed is better than anything I've seen in Singapore.

We then proceeded for class, which was very nearby. Eric's chosen his spot well. This was quite enjoyable even though I wish we were more active in the cooking – Eric passed us vegetables/food and told us to chop this and that, as opposed to giving us a recipe which we then had to work through. I do appreciate he has to work with a large range of ability and kitchen experience, so I guess this is what he has found works. Also interesting to note that practically everything we ate was boiled as opposed to fried. Hmmmm… French food is healthier than I thought.

Finally, it was time to eat. The white asparagus was beautiful…. it was soft and melted in the mouth. I really loved its delicate flavour. It was accompanied by a green salad of mache or lamb lettuce, with chopped tomatoes and orange segments and a dressing of honey, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. Incidentally, I must say that I know now the amount of waste that must be generated in the French restaurants. A good quarter to one-third of the asparagus is not eaten because it is too fibrous; this is gauged by bending the asparagus and seeing where it breaks. The Canadian lady asked Eric whether he composts; he confessed he did not as he would have to travel to the suburbs to do this and he only had a little motor car...

The fish was alright, and I now definitely know what is meant by French food being all about the sauce. But the mussels were beautiful – tasted so fresh and cooked just right so that they were soft, succulent and juicy. They were accompanied by a mash of the celeriac and potato, and by little pearled vegetables. Incidentally, pearling the veggies also results in a lot of waste being generated, especially when done by unskilled hands who scoop out the little spheres at quite some distance from each other. I of course tried to maximise the number of pearls I got out of each courgette or turnip or carrot.

The chocolate cake was fun! It was also so simple to make, that I am really encouraged to do this at home. Essentially the cake doesn’t cook all the way through – so the molten centre is really the original cake mix (egg, sugar, chocolate, butter and flour). Eric also told us the secret of really sweet strawberries – forget about what the outside looks like – what is important is whether the core of the strawberry is pink – that’s the sign of a sweet strawberry. The inner cores of the strawberries we get in Singapore are all white, so that’s the reason why they just are not so sweet.


Ah yes, a really satisfying and filling meal indeed. After all that, it was difficult to put down the other things we did that day. In fact they are just jottings, so I will end this post here. (And the photolink is here).



P.S. The website for Cook'n with Class (note! there's a large section with recipes): http://www.cooknwithclass.com/index.html. And Eric is a warm and friendly chap, who makes everyone feel comfortable (aside from explaining things very well).